Hearing Before Tennessee Joint Judiciary

A

Committee

T the recent session of the Tennessee Legislature, two Sunday rest bills were introduced, one, the Cooper bill, with such drastic provisions and such evident religious bias that it was summarily rejected; the other, the Graham-Bratton bill.

A hearing upon the two bills was held at a joint meeting of the judiciary committees of the senate and the house, on January 20. The last speaker in opposition to the Graham-Bratton bill was Judge Cyrus Simmons, of Knoxville, Tenn.

Taken from Report of Hearing SENATOR HOUK: "Mr. Chairman, Mr. Simmons is a lawyer, a judge, and one of the best citizens of Knox County."

MR. SIMMONS: "I have great respect for the learned gentlemen that proposed

this legislation. I believe that they have done it honestly. They mean well by it, or they would not have taken pains to draft this law and come here to champion it. They tell us in the outset that it is not religious legislation, that the object of the law is to regulate civil conduct. So the bill as you look at it is very innocent, sort of lamblike in appearance. But, gentlemen, if you don't look out, it is liable to speak with the voice of a dragon. Let me read some of this bill:

"It shall be unlawful and a misdemeanor for any person, firm, or corporation to do, or exercise on Sunday any of the vocations, trades, or business of common or ordinary life, including the conduct or operation of any recreation, sport, or entertainment for which tickets are sold, a fixed charge is made, or an offering is received as a compensation for the entertainment afforded, or to cause or permit the same to be done by others on his or its behalf, acts of real necessity, such as the operation of necessary public utilities and necessary acts of charity and the exercise of religious worship excepted; and any person, firm, or corporation found guilty of violating this section shall be fined not less than twenty-five nor more than

fifty dollars, or imprisoned in the county jail not less than fifteen nor more than thirty days, or both fined and imprisoned in the discretion of the court.'

Indefinite and Subject to Whim of Bigotry

"Now, gentlemen, in the construction of this law, the first question that the court will have to decide is whether the law definitely defines the crime. If it does not, it would be subject to a demurrable disability. What, then, is a ' necessary' public utility or a 'necessary' act of charity? Who is going to decide that question? Will it be the party who prosecutes, or will it ultimately devolve upon the courts to decide? Of course it is the judicial function of the court to construe the law, but the failure of the bill to define the crime, makes the application of the proposed law a prejusubject to persecution as well as prosedicial means whereby the citizen will be cution, to religious bigotry and unnecessary annoyances. It will afford a pretended excuse for one industrial class or one religious sect to put any citizen in the toils of the law whose business may be competitive or whose religion may be objectionable.

"You know there was a time when the Saviour performed an act of charity, and He considered that it was necessary. An old man who had been afflicted thirtyeight years was lying at the pool of Bethesda, and on the Sabbath day Jesus healed him. He believed it was necessary, but the scribes and Pharisees condemned that act, and sought to kill the Saviour because He healed that man on the Sabbath. Now that sort of extreme construction is possible in this law. But they tell us that this law has no religious feature in it; that it is not intended to regulate religious conduct, but only civil. If what we are after is only civil conduct, then why not pass a law to make a weekly holiday instead of a weekly holy

day?

to Rest

"The next argument is that the law is necessary for the physical, the mental, and the moral well-being of the citizen in order that he may rest one day in

seven.

"Gentlemen, our citizens are so peculiarly constituted, and they are so industrious and ambitious to work on the first day of the week, that we have to pass a law to make them rest on Sunday; and, for the rest of the week, they are so idle and indolent that we have to pass a vagrancy law to compel them to work the other six days. The idea of going to the legislature to make a man rest! It is human nature to follow the line of least resistance; it is natural for all of us to want to play. Pass a law to have a weekly holiday, and I guarantee we won't get much work done.

lignant oppression in the hands of those actuated by a spirit of despotism and bigotry. Judging from the history of the past, such an un-Christian and unAmerican application cannot be avoided.

Sunday Laws Condemn God

"It is innocent looking. It has been dressed up to look that way. But let me tell you right now that this proposed law is religious because it seeks to make the citizens of Tennessee better than God

"But would that suit the advocates of this bill? No, gentlemen. They want a weekly holy day; they want to enforce the sanctity of Sunday by penal legislation. "Gentlemen, they say they want to regulate civil conduct, and on that subterfuge the passage of this bill is advocated. But how will the bill be applied? When the citizen is prosecuted, and too often persecuted, for what may be alleged as a violation of the bill, the court, agreeable to past decisions, may maintain the law's integrity on the theory that it regulates civil conduct; but its application will affect the religion of certain classes of our citizens, and its judicial construction will not and can not

himself. Let me show you. In the beginning God worked six days I worked the first weekly cycle- and rested on what we call Saturday, the seventh day, or the Sabbath. Sup

pose God should come here to Tennessee in human form, after this bill is passed, and He should work the first six days, which include Sunday, the first day of the week, what would you do with Him? You would put Him in

He worked on the 'six working days,' including Sunday, the first day of the week, and He rested on the seventh-day Sabbath. If Christ should come back to earth again (and He has promised to do so); if He should walk the streets of this city and the roads of this State as He did the streets of Jerusalem and the roads of Palestine; if He should do again as He did when He was on earth; if He should work six days, including Sunday, the first day of the week, and rest the seventh-day Sabbath according to the commandment and His custom, what would happen to Him if this bill becomes a law? You would put your own Saviour in jail and make a criminal of Him under the very law by which you seek to honor Him. The most dangerous thing you can do is to tamper with Sunday legislation.

Parentage of Sunday Laws

"We have a Sunday law its proponents are bragging about. You say it was passed in 1803, but it has a parentage that dates back beyond that. It was passed in the days of Charles II, in the seventeenth century, as a product of the Dark Ages. It is practically a paraphrase of English legislation, when England had a state religion, and when there was a union of church and state. Unfortunately, it was brought over here by the Puritans, and became a part of our colonial statutes. It has been so highly regarded that it is almost abrogated by nonusage. And because public opinion disregards it, the proponents of such legislation are endeavoring by this bill to revise that Sunday law, make it. stronger, provide a greater penalty, and thus force it on the people. Such religio-political legislation is contrary to the State and Federal constitutions and against the inalienable rights of the citizen.

Religious Legislation Knows No Bounds, No Mercy

"Pass this bill, and how far do its proponents wish to go? Do you think that Sunday legislation is going to stop

with this innocent bill? Never! The next measure you will find introduced will be a duplication of the drastic Cooper bill that your honorable body has wisely and unanimously rejected. This bill has in it all the elements that made possible the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition, that wrote in characters of blood the revolting history of the Dark Ages, that burned some of the early Reformers at the stake, that sent millions of martyrs to an untimely death. How can this be possible? When the penalty of this bill is disregarded and the law openly violated, the church will demand greater and still greater penalties, until nothing will satisfy the law and its advocates but the death of the violator, as was provided in the colonial Massachusetts and Connecticut Sunday laws. Do you want history to repeat itself! Do you want the stream of mercy to run backward? Gentlemen, reject this bill."

They Want to Puritanize America

Judge Simmons was right when he said that the existing Sunday laws of Tennessee were so drastic that they would oppress and persecute some of the best citizens in Tennessee on account of their religion. It was not so very long ago when more than a score of good, conscientious Seventh-day Adventists were cast into prison and forced to work in the chain gang in Tennessee for working on the first six days of the week and resting on the seventh day. Their liberty to worship God according to the

dictates of their consciences was denied them. Yet the religious organizations which instigated the proposed drastic Sunday legislation, are not satisfied with the present law. They want to put more teeth into it.

Judge Simmons alluded to the early Puritan Sunday blue laws of colonial Massachusetts and Connecticut. The Puritans did not hesitate to invoke the death sentence upon the violators of the Sunday laws. Here are a few of the drastic Sunday laws which were in force in those times, taken from J. H. Trum